Also you can use trigger volumes to manually adjust the exposure per location so if you want it to look super bright when the player first sees it you can crank up the max exposure, then after that first sighting, tone it back down so they can see past it.

I really wish Source supported some kind of realtime-procedural detail sprite/model placement, without baking individual lightmaps too. When I play Battlefield 3 I get the impression that Frostbite 2 has it, or something similar. This would reduce compile times, filesize and not need any significant limitations.

On another note I've been having this issue when I exit the texture browser and go back into it I end up at the top of the page again and it's sort of annoying when I'd like it to stay where I left off. I vaguely remember a time when it did not do this and was wondering if I could bring that joyous time back again...

There's a limit on detailspites in default Source, plus they look pretty static. In BF3 they wave around (from wind, from explosions) and look a lot more dynamic in general.

In CS:S version of source the sprites are much more realistic (far from "real", but convincing) they have the ability to add models, and use different sprite layouts, but the fade-distance is short; so you better have your own mod (many of us here do to change stuff like that)